Free previewStop 6 of Rockefeller Center Christmas Walk: The Tree, the Windows and Fifth Avenue
The Cathedral That Ran Out of Money
You're on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st, directly across from Rockefeller Center, and the white marble church filling this whole block is St. Patrick's Cathedral. Tip your head back and follow the two spires up from the big bronze doors. They rise about 330 feet. And when the doors first opened to worshippers in 1879, those spires still weren't there.
John Hughes, the Catholic archbishop of New York, led a flock that was mostly Irish and growing fast. As early as 1850 he decided the city's old cathedral, down on Mulberry Street in Lower Manhattan, was too small. He wanted the new one here.
It was an odd choice. In the 1850s this stretch of Fifth Avenue was nearly countryside, a place of rocks and unopened streets, with an orphanage and an asylum nearby.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 6 of Rockefeller Center Christmas Walk: The Tree, the Windows and Fifth Avenue (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
